Tuesday, 20 March 2012

Listen Fates, who sit nearest of gods to the throne of Zeus, and weave with shuttles of adamant, inescapable devices for councels of every kind beyond counting, Aisa, Clotho and Lachesis, fine-armed daughters of Night, hearken to our prayers, all-terrible goddesses, of sky and earth.

Pindar:Fragmenta Chorica Adespota, 5Now if it is not the causal connections which we are concerned with, then the activities of the mind lie open before us. And when we are worried about the nature of thinking, the puzzlement which we wrongly interpret to be one about the nature of a medium is a puzzlement caused by the mystifying use of our language. This kind of mistake recurs again and again in philosophy; e.g. when we are puzzled about the nature of time, when time seems to us a queer thing.We are most strongly tempted to think that here are things hidden, something we can see from the outside but which we can't look into. And yet nothing of the sort is the case. It is not new facts about time which we want to know. All the facts that concern us lie open before us. But it is the use of the substantive "time" which mystifies us. If we look into the grammar of that word, we shall feel that it is no less astounding that man should have conceived of a deity of time than it would be to conceive of a deity of negation or disjunction.Ludwig Wittgenstein: from The Blue Book (1930s Cambridge lecture notes as circulated by students), 1958Can mercy be found in the heart of her who was born of the stone? Were she not merciless, would she kick the breast of her lord?Men call you merciful, but there is no trace of mercy in you, Mother.You have cut off the heads of the children of others, and these you wear as a garland around your neck.It matters not how much I call you "Mother, Mother." You hear me, but you will not listen.

Rāmprasād Sen (1718-1785), in David R. Kinsley: Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine in the Hindu Religions, 1988

If thou openest not the gate to let me enter, I will break the door, I will wrench the lock, I will smash the door-posts, I will force the doors. I will bring up the dead to eat the living. And the dead will outnumber the living."Descent of the Goddess Ishtar into the Lower World", in Morris Jastrow, The Civilization of Babylonia and Assyria, 1915

Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death.

If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.

Our life has no end in just the way our visual field has no limits.Ludwig Wittgenstein: from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1921

Time is not, Time is the evil, beloved.

Ezra Pound: Canto LXXIV, from The Pisan Cantos, 1948

"All the time -- I feel the hands of the clock -- moving."

Ezra Pound: from The Paris Review interview, 1960

................................... ...........................Time, space,.......................................neither life nor death is the answer.

FateWhen people talked about the inevitableDesign of a mortal span, what was always meant The earliest words for it are transparentMetaphors, moira, aisaDenoting share or portion, those distinctiveEvents of a person's life which carryChange like the scar of a laserA talisman stamped into theChainA knotComplicationATroposNo turningIt's like listening to the radio at nightIn a heavy stormInterference line noiseStaticHer messagesGet lostIn silenceThe frequencies can no longer be sorted outA kink or tangle in the threadScissorsIn the hand of natureOne can't argue with this any moreThan a bell with its flaw

The Three Fates, called by Hesiod the Daughters of the Night. Atropos or Aisa (left) was the oldest of the Three Fates, and was known as the "inflexible" or "inevitable." It was Atropos who chose the mechanism of death and ended the life of each mortal by cutting their thread with her "abhorred shears." She worked along with her two sisters, Clotho, who spun the thread, and Lachesis, who measured the length: Cecchino del Salviati, 1550 (Galleria Palatino, Pizzi Palace, Florence)

The Triumph of Death, or The Three Fates. The Three Fates, Clotho (right), Lachesis (centre) and Atropos (left), who spin, draw out and snip the thread of Life, represent Death, triumphing over the fallen body of Chastity, in this tapestry illustrating the third subject in Petrarch's poem The Triumphs (first, Love triumphs; then Love is overcome by Chastity, Chastity by Death, Death by Fame, Fame by Time and Time by Eternity): Flemish tapestry, probably Brussels, c. 1510-1520; image by Wilhem Meis, 5 December 2004

Bas relief of Atropos cutting the thread of life: photo by Tom Oates, 18 June 2008

Su Song's water-powered astronomical clock (scaled model). The original clock tower designed by Su Song (1020-1021 AD) was three storeys tall (c. 35 feet), with an armillary sphere on the roof, and a celestial globe on the third storey. From an exhibition at Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland, California: photo by Kowloonese, 12 July 2004

Chinese mechanical and horological engineering from the Song Dynasty; this diagram provides an overall general view of the inner workings and armillary sphere of Su Song's clocktower built in Kaifeng. The drawn illustration comes from Su Song's book Xin Yi Xiang Fa Yao published in the year 1092. On the right is the upper reservoir tank with the 'constant-level tank' beneath it. In the center foreground is the 'earth horizon' box in which the celestial globe was mounted. Below that are the time keeping shaft and wheels supported by a mortar-shaped end-bearing. Behind this is the main driving wheel with its spokes and scoops. Above that are the left and right upper locks with an upper balancing lever and upper link: Joseph Needham, in Science and Civilization in China: Volume 4, Part 2, Mechanical Engineering; image by PericlesofAthens, 14 August 2007

One night as he sat at his table head on hands he saw himself rise and go. One night or day. For when his own light went out he was not left in the dark. Light of a kind came then from the one high window. Under it still the stool on which till he could or would no more he used to mount to see the sky. Why he did not crane out to see what lay beneath was perhaps because the window was not made to open or because he could or would not open it. Perhaps he knew only too well what lay beneath and did not wish to see it again. So he would simply stand there high above the earth and see through the clouded pane the cloudless sky. Its faint unchanging light unlike any light he could remember from the days and nights when day followed hard on night and night on day. This outer light then when his own went out became his only light till it in its turn went out and left him in the dark. Till it in its turn went out.

I’m curious about Ishtar’s weapon: in one picture it resembles a rope loop (the thread of life?), and reminds me of an ouroboros (the life circling back on itself?). In another pic it looks like a caduceus, only the snakes’ heads are looking outward. I need time to research this.

From a sundial dating to Medieval Spain: Vulnerant omnia, ultima necat. (The hours): all of them wound, the last one kills.

I have been busily unpacking my mother's life these last few days--and in it a few odd clocks and an antique barometer and lots of books in Ancient Greek and things I have no clue as to what they are--fragments of time, her time, and reading this, and looking at clock that only works if it is flat on the table and wondering about the barometer which somehow needs to be re-inked, a process I remember my father enjoying but taking forever to do . . .I am puzzled at what any of it is for, or what it means, and why anything and whatever--and I do have to say, it is all mystifying, no matter what kind of grammar of substance or logic one applies.

The TV gameshow from which this post derives its title (see link above) was a familiar feature of the early 50s cultural set. Tick-tock, tick-tock. Not quite the Epic of Gilgamesh, but hey, the history we have, however tacky and idiotic it is, remains all we've got. Said the permanently bewildered test subject.

Nin, I'm as mystified as you are. Possibly even more. So many logs bumping and bobbing in the Time River. You can't go home again, I remember Thomas Wolfe having warned us long ago. The public library stocked all his books. I recall being impressed by the fact that, being tall, he wrote them all by using the top of a refrigerator as a writing desk. That impressed and depressed me at the same time. Our refrigerator had a serpentine nest of metal coils on top. Had Thomas Wolfe owned our refrigrator, wuld he even have WANTED to go home again?

We've just had a twelve-hour utilities company operation out front, vast gantry crane and rigging outfits, removal and replacement of power poles, all somewhat hairy. Power outage. Re-programming. Confusion, mystification, no sleep. What century is it again??

The source text on Ishtar/Inanna's descent to the underworld has her holding a lapis lazuli measuring ring and golden rod. A coil of measuring string and a yardstick? A staff and a chaplet of beads? It is elsewhere contended she holds a shepherd's crook and noserope. Others argue in reply that there's no rope.

I can't decide if the beautiful moving poem gets smothered by the pictures and other texts or just lives among them in its proper place in the time/space jumble. In any event, this is quite a remarkable piece for greeting the day. I'd like to go back to bed and have a dream about it. Curtis

Oy, what a day, the high-risk wildcatters on the high-wire grid, the mast-size power poles going down and up like the rigging in a storm at sea in a Patrick O'Brien novel!

The vast new pole came in a sheath-like metal tube that brought to mind those vintage Nike missiles.

The last one of those I saw with my own eyes was the central town monument in a windswept ghost town on the High Plains called Boone, Colorado. I was passing through to do a story on a government project to develop wind turbines at the Federal Train Test Center. Or was it high speed bullet trains, or yes, both. Two interesting technologies which of course came to nought because shortly thereafter the mini-"Energy Crisis" was over, the price of gas went down and the Empire rumbled on.

Curtis, your discreet hint reminds me that even as the power pole missile launcher was being gantried into place, and the guys in hard hats were trampling upon my companion's five tender daffodils, it came to me that I had half-apologetically smothered my own poem in a sea of overkill, exhibiting once again a salient failing. (See comment on previous post.)

And it was too late to massacre my own prize blossoms in Edit because the power was gone!

Not that this should be accepted as exculpatory, I do think the spasm of excessiveness had been perhaps a Beat the Clock-ish sort of manouevre, however.

Carpe diem, before the power goes out and/or surges on, the modem crashes again and the blog foolery implodes forever.

(No such luck though.)

Twelve hours of insomniac noise-polluted meditation later, one was reduced to cursing the ghost of Thomas Edison.

I'm watching the clockwaiting for my next PEPCO bill should be now that they put in a "Smart Meter"

maybe two time higher than the last bill

not to mentionthat a guy in the bucket hit a wirewhich sparkedwhich caught that old oakto catch firewhich burned out the squirrels' nestswho where just squirreling around and multiplying things time and time againsort uve

Ed, in this operation, there were three separate crews of hard hats, with up to eight men per crew, each crew executing a different phase of the project; specialization the name of the game here, all very rough & ready; one thought of those wildcatters who cap oil fires for a living; this is a company that owns and manages (and of course sells, and sets the prices for) the power of ten million people, pretty much as it sees fit; at one point in the perilous third stage, sparks flew, and flames shot out much as St Elmo's fire around the broken main mast... all very trying to observe and doubtless the pricetag (including hazard-pay) on the day ran up into the six figures. Of course we will be the ones paying, so I suppose the explosive moment would be filed under the category of "getting your money's worth"(?).